Living and working under the shadow of a spreading banyan tree can be as much an advantage as a handicap. Ask Abhishek Bachchan

Last October, during the Mumbai Film Festival, adman Prahlad Kakkar set the cat among the pigeons. Describing Bollywood as a “pop and mom shop”, he said: “Abhishek Bachchan has delivered 17 flops in a row but he is still going strong. He is unique – he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose. Bachchan Junior hit back at Kakkar, calling him a “better stand-up comedian than an ad filmmaker”. The usually combative ad industry doyen retreated and tendered an apology to Abhishek. But what really was he saying sorry for? Kakkar had spoken the truth couched in a ostensibly light-hearted jibe.

Sons, daughters, nephews and nieces of established Bollywood stars, producers and directors do indeed receive special treatment when film projects are put together. It’s a closed, incestuous world in which ‘outsiders’ are usually kept at bay unless the man or woman in question happens to be exceptionally gifted or manages to find a generous godfather.

Would Uday Chopra have had an acting career had he not been producer-director Yash Chopra’s son? Or, would anybody have consistently backed Emraan Hashmi if he wasn’t Mahesh Bhatt’s nephew? Nice, cosy, brazenly nepotistic arrangements seem to be the order of the day. Flops can derail the careers of the best of screen actors, but star sons and nephews are never affected by box office debacles and bad performances. They keep returning like bad pennies.

Abhishek, who made his debut a decade back with J.P. Dutta’s Refugee, has had a chequered career marked by more downs than ups. There is no denying that the young man has got more chances than an ordinary newcomer would have. The reason is pretty obvious: a famous surname helps in a movie industry where blood ties seem to matter far more than genuine talent.

Last year, he delivered two huge box office duds – Mani Ratnam’s Raavan and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se. This year has been only marginally better. He had two releases in the space of a month. One, Abhinay Deo’s thriller Game, lost the plot before the die could be cast; the other, Rohan Sippy’s Dum Maaro Dum, projected Abhishek to good effect as a cool-as-a-cucumber cop, a persona reminiscent of many of his super-successful dad’s popular star turns. The film fetched the actor some positive reviews and was an average box office success.

After the overlong KHJJS sank without a trace, the beleaguered actor told an interviewer that his detractors were being unfair to him. They were making a big deal about the failures of Raavan and KHJJS but forgetting the success of Paa and Dostana the year before. “Luck plays a crucial role,” he said. It indeed does. He was born in the right place and at the right time.

To be fair to Abhishek, however, his lineage is as much a bane as it is a boon. Expectations from him are much higher than they normally would be from an actor who has no known connection with the Mumbai movie industry. In Abhishek’s case the problem takes on an even more intractable form because of the towering shadow that he has to live in – that of Amitabh Bachchan.

Tusshar Kapoor, Jeetendra’s son and Ekta Kapoor’s brother, is another Bollywood actor who has survived choppy weather in the industry for a decade owing to who he is rather than due to any special gifts as an actor.

Beginning his career with a hit, Mujhe Kuch Kehna Hai, co-starring Kareena Kapoor (who was also opposite Abhishek in Refugee), he has been completely at sea in his subsequent attempts to get into the big league. Today, Tusshar is known only for his comedic supporting role in Golmaal and its sequels.

He, of course, claims that he has become far more demanding about the quality of the roles that he accepts of late. “When a bad film does badly, it does not really bother me,” he says. “But when a good film fails at the box office, it hurts.” Someone like him can afford to be choosy because he has an influential film industry family to fall back on.

Stuck in the buffoonery rut for several years now, Tusshar is indeed seeking to reinvent himself. His latest release, the Rajshri Productions film, Love U... Mr Kalakaar. The film, co-starring Amrita Rao, has him essaying the role of a cartoonist of limited means who falls in love with a much richer girl. The actor’s natural affability shines through but the film is pulled down by a rather listless screenplay. This is a rare solo male lead role for Tusshar.

If Luv U... Mr Kalakaar does not work wonders at the box office he will be back to square one. Tusshar has yet to prove that he is an actor who can pull off a role that demands more than just looking cute and acting funny. So the scepticism about his ability to deliver the goods still persists. Tusshar’s dad, Jeetendra was a huge star in his time and played a wide range of roles in a long, eventful career.

In the last decade and a bit, Bollywood has seen a veritable procession of star sons and daughters having a shot at the showbiz big time. Most of them have fallen well short of the mark despite numerous “second chances”, be it Fardeen Khan, his cousin Zayed Khan, Vivek Oberoi or Esha Deol, the last named a chip off not one but two old blocks, Dharmendra and Hema Malini, among Hindi cinema’s hottest ever romantic pairs.

If there are more male names than female in the list above, there is one good reason. The Mumbai movie industry is still a very conservative place and major players here do not favour the idea of their daughters getting into the movies.

But that scenario might be changing – after Karisma and Kareena, Bollywood has seen girls like Sonam Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha make it big. There is now news that Govinda’s daughter, Narmadaa Ahuja, and Hema Malini’s younger daughter, Ahana Deol, are also waiting in the wings. Bollywood character actor Shakti Kapoor’s daughter, Shraddha, too, made her acting debut in 2010 in the commercial disaster, Teen Patti. She was recently seen in Love Ka The End, a romantic comedy bankrolled by Yash Raj Films. The young actress is reportedly on a three-film contract with Y-Films, a division of YRF that specialises in producing big screen entertainment for the teen market.

There are only two current Bollywood actors with industry genealogy – Hrithik Roshan and Ranbir Kapoor – who haven’t so far had doubts cast on their abilities. Their fathers, Rakesh Roshan and Rishi Kapoor, were competent and popular actors in their time but neither was quite the kind of timeless superstar that the Big B is.

Hrithik’s on-screen work has never been held up in comparison with that of his actor-turned-director dad. However, Ranbir has occasionally been compared with his father, both being romantic heroes, but he has done enough to justify his own place in the sun.

Fans rarely, if ever, see Ranbir in the company of his famous parents, a strategy that has shielded him from unwarranted comparisons. Abhishek, on the other hand, has never sought to shrug off the family tag – the Bachchans seem to move around in an entourage – and that makes him all the more vulnerable to pot-shots by detractors.

It is probably not insignificant that four of the most bankable Bollywood stars today – Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar – aren’t star sons. While Shahrukh and Akshay have no prior linkages with the movie industry, Aamir and Salman do not have actors as fathers. While the former’s dad is film producer Tahir Hussain, Salman’s father is former screenwriter Salim Khan. These four men, who have never had to live under giant shadows, have carved their own unique niches in Bollywood.

No matter how hard he tries, Abhishek for one will never be able to shrug off the widespread suspicion that he has got this far inhis career simply because he has had his father’s coattails to cling on to. The Big B is a humongous banyan tree – stepping out of its shadow – if at all that were to happen – might take his son an entire lifetime.

by Saibal Chatterjee